Squirrel Proof Your Birdfeeders Using Pepper Suet
Keeping the squirrels out of your bird feeders is a tough assignment. Today there are many types of squirrel proof feeders on the market, but you will find many of them work by physically blocking the squirrel from the bird food. Pepper bird suet feeders take a different approach that works surprisingly well.
Wintertime can be the toughest months for many local birds. The normal sources of food for birds are tough to come by. Many bushed have dropped their berry or fruit production long ago, the insects that are a staple of the bird diet are in hiding, and the snow and ice serve to cover what little food is left. To help our birds through the winter months, we look for those types of food that will benefit them the most, and a common selection is suet.
Bird suet is a high energy food that is naturally suited for use in the winter time. Suet is a simple rendering of the fat some some cuts of sheep and cattle, and to attract a variety of birds often it will include other high energy foods like peanuts, which results in a bird food high in energy and easy to eat in winter. The rendered form of natural suet can go bad at warmer temperatures so many people use it only as a food in the winter. These days you can find find artificially rendered suet products that will tolerate the summer heat in many areas, so you can hang a suet feeder almost all year if you like. You simply put it in a suet bird feeder and the birds love it.
The problem with suet is that many pests like squirrels find it just as attractive as the birds to, and the challenge is keeping them out of the feeder. There are many types of squirrel proof feeders that are are on the market today, with spinning parts or moving doors that work to keep the squirrel out.
Nature has provided its own ingenious solution. It turns out that over the years, peppers have developed their heat by creating capsaicin, the chemical responsible for the “hotness” of peppers and other capsicums. But it has almost no impact on birds, so they eat it at will. But like most mammals squirrels are really put off by the heat of peppers.
This leads us to a simple solution for keeping the squirrels and other rodents out of our suet feeders, and that is to simply add pepper to the suet mix. With hot pepper suet the birds are unaffected, but the feeder pests can’t tolerate it. No need for swinging feeders, spinning feeders or big ugly baffles to ward off the squirrels.
